I wish there had been a series of books like that available for me as a beginning grad student, covering seemingly trivial but often intractable activities like “How to read a paper”, “How to attend a talk” and, indeed, “How to do a literature review”.
There are a huge number of papers on Google Scholar on how to do a literature review and how to read a scientific paper. On Google, there’s plenty of info on how to attend a scientific conference. Unfortunately, probably most teachers/profs in research programs don’t think to point students in these directions.
At least the top hits that you point to on Google Scholar seem like they’re going for something slightly different than what I’m doing here though: They seem to talk about how to write a formal literature review paper or section of a dissertation. I’m trying to describe a process for getting familiar with an entirely new field, even though you might not be publishing a paper as a result of your literature review. I’m also trying to write something that’s a little bit more friendly and pragmatic than what usually gets published in academic journals.
Some of the work you link to in “how to read a scientific paper” are more similar in style to what I’m going for, and I would probably have benefitted from looking at those earlier in my graduate school career.
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There are a huge number of papers on Google Scholar on how to do a literature review and how to read a scientific paper. On Google, there’s plenty of info on how to attend a scientific conference. Unfortunately, probably most teachers/profs in research programs don’t think to point students in these directions.
Thanks!
At least the top hits that you point to on Google Scholar seem like they’re going for something slightly different than what I’m doing here though: They seem to talk about how to write a formal literature review paper or section of a dissertation. I’m trying to describe a process for getting familiar with an entirely new field, even though you might not be publishing a paper as a result of your literature review. I’m also trying to write something that’s a little bit more friendly and pragmatic than what usually gets published in academic journals.
Some of the work you link to in “how to read a scientific paper” are more similar in style to what I’m going for, and I would probably have benefitted from looking at those earlier in my graduate school career.
I added a note in the post to acknowledge this feedback. Thank you for reading and commenting!
I think that’s a good niche to fill! It would be great to sort of have a review of these guides to compare them.